University of Akron: We’re not Closing Multicultural Center

by Diverse Staff

The University of Akron joined a growing list of colleges and universities exercising severe fiscal belt-tightening in the new budget year when it announced this week that 213 staffers were losing their jobs. The university is attempting to offset a reported $40 million deficit.

UVa Grads Sue Rolling Stone Over Retracted Campus Rape Story

by Alan Suderman, Associated Press

Three University of Virginia graduates and members of a fraternity who were portrayed in a debunked account of a gang rape in a retracted Rolling Stone magazine story filed a lawsuit against the publication and the article’s author, court records show.

Feds Accuse Philadelphia Congressman Fattah of Corruption

by Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah paid off a campaign loan with charitable donations and federal grants, funneled campaign money to pay down his son’s student loan debt and disguised a lobbyist’s bribe as payment for a car he never sold, prosecutors said Wednesday in announcing a racketeering indictment against the congressman.

BCCC in Good Standing; Sojourner-Douglass Loses Accreditation

Diverse Docket: Race Discrimination Suit Still on Table

by Eric Freedman

Borough of Manhattan Community College and the chair of its Business Management Department must continue defending a race discrimination suit by an adjunct professor of Nigerian descent, a federal judge has ruled.

Boston College Under Investigation Over Access for Disabled

by Associated Press

Boston College has become more difficult to navigate for people with disabilities in recent years, according to former and current students whose complaints have prompted an investigation into whether the school is violating accessibility laws.

Diverse Docket: Morehead State Unanimous Winner on Appeal

by Eric Freedman

Morehead State University didn’t violate First Amendment rights or commit disability discrimination when it denied tenure to an assistant professor of art history, a unanimous federal appeals panel has ruled.

Study Links Discrimination, Blacks’ Risk of Mental Disorders

by Catherine Morris

New research shows that African Americans and Caribbean Blacks who experience multiple types of discrimination are at a much greater risk for a variety of mental disorders, such as anxiety, depression and substance abuse.

Exchange Program Expands Horizons of African-American Males

14 members of three fraternities at The Ohio State University (OSU) traveled to China last month, where they choreographed a step show for Chinese students as part of a cross-cultural awareness program funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of State.

Injured Football Player to Return to Towson University

Educators Competing With Athletics for Low-income Students’ Focus

by Lydia Lum

Workshop panelist Nathan Weigl, a doctoral student at Appalachian State University, suggested that recruiting tactics of college coaches can be borrowed and adapted by GEAR UP practitioners and community partners.

Cal State Campuses Preserving Painful Piece of U.S. History

by Lydia Lum

The archives of 15 California State University campuses are collaborating to digitize about 10,000 documents and 100-plus oral histories connected to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Education Gets Top Billing on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON ― Lawmakers looking ahead to the November elections are putting renewed focus on education, tackling issues on Capitol Hill this week ranging from expanding charter schools to paying off student loan debt.

And, a House committee will examine how higher education and college sports might be affected by a regional National Labor Relations Board ruling allowing Northwestern University football players to unionize.

Voters rank education high among issues of importance to them, and this week’s activities are likely a nod to that.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has made expanding school choice options a priority. Reflecting that enthusiasm, the House as early as Thursday will consider legislation that would provide $300 million annually to expand charter schools. It would consolidate two existing programs, provide state grants to expand and replicate high-quality charter schools and fund the acquisition of buildings for the schools. Charter schools typically use taxpayer dollars but are run by outside organizations.

“America isn’t working when our students do not have the opportunity to attend a school that best fits their needs,” Cantor said in a statement.

Even as many Democrats adamantly oppose school vouchers, expanding high-quality charter schools is an area where the two sides have found some common ground. The charter schools bill, for example, has the support of Rep. George Miller, a California lawmaker who is the ranking Democrat on the House education committee. While it appeared to have a strong chance of House passage, its future was uncertain in the Senate.

Student loans, the subject of some contentious debate in 2013, are coming up again in both the House and Senate.

With the doubling of interest rates looming, Congress last year acted to keep them at low level levels for now—but linked those rates to the financial markets. President Barack Obama had trumpeted the issue in his 2012 re-election bid, and the legislation passed with bipartisan support.

Now, moving forward a Democratic agenda focused on college costs leading to the November election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Tuesday filed a bill co-sponsored by more than 20 fellow Democratic senators that would open the door for potentially millions of federal loan recipients to refinance that debt at the same rate as current recipients. Undergraduates, for example, qualify for loans at a 3.86 percentage rate.

Warren called the $1.2 trillion in student loan debt in America a “crisis that threatens our economy.” Her plan would fund the effort with a tax increase on wealthy Americans, but could potentially cost billions.

“I think bringing down the interest rates on existing student loans would be a huge benefit for young people who are trying to build some economic security and for this economy,” Warren said.

Miller and John Tierney, D-Mass., planned to file a companion bill in the House, and the group Progressive Change Campaign Committee said it would hold grassroots events this week in support.

Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., said Republican lawmakers are open to refinancing student loan debt, but have to be mindful of the cost to taxpayers.

“It’s also important we don’t drown the future generation in debt,” Messer said.

In a March Associated Press-GfK poll, education was one of the few issues where Democrats had an advantage over Republicans. In the poll, 25 percent of respondents favored the Democrats approach while 18 percent preferred the Republicans. But among a public disenchanted with both parties, more—29 percent—said they trust neither party on education. Another 26 percent said they trusted both equally.

Despite the renewed focus on education, it does not appear that Congress is close to rewriting the No Child Left Behind law that’s been up for renewal since 2007. The GOP-led House passed a rewrite of the law, but no vote has been scheduled on the Senate floor on a Democratic-run Senate education panel’s version.

Because of the congressional stalemate, the Obama administration has been issuing waivers allowing states—and in some cases districts—to ignore parts of the law if they come up with their own reform plans.

Miller said he’s getting less optimistic the law and another one up for renewal focused on higher education will pass this year.

“This nation has a lot of work to do on its education system but there’s some belief by a lot of people that the federal government doesn’t make any difference and we don’t need to do this, but the fact of the matter is we’re falling further and further behind internationally,” Miller said.

But the House was expected to take up a bill focused on research in education that would reauthorize and update entities such as the Institute of Education Sciences.

The regional NLRB ruling on college athletes unionizing also is attracting some attention in the Capitol.

In announcing the Thursday hearing, House Education Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., called the regional labor board’s decision a “radical departure from longstanding federal labor policies.”

The ruling in March said athletes were employees of the university and had the same rights to bargain collectively as other workers. Northwestern University football players cast secret ballots April 25 on whether to form a union, although the results aren’t expected to be released until after the full NLRB rules on Northwestern’s appeal.

Outside of Washington, lawmakers in several states are debating the future of the Common Core standards, which have been adopted in 44 states and the District of Columbia and spell out for each grade what math and English skills students should master.

On Monday, the group Collaborative for Student Success, which is backed by education foundations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said it would send representatives to Capitol Hill and to GOP congressional committee offices encouraging support for the standards even among opposition from the tea party wing of the party.

Older Men, Minorities Report Lower Rates of Treatment for Depression LOS ANGELESOlder men, African Americans and Latinos with clinical depression reported significantly lower rates of treatment than other participants surveyed in a national study led by UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researchers. Overall, less than one in three depressed older adults studied had received potentially effective treatment […]

Stanford Under Federal Investigation For DiscriminationSTANFORD, Calif. — Stanford University is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor for potential violation of federal affirmative action law and gender discrimination.The federal investigation was prompted, in part, by statements made by the university’s outgoing provost, Condoleezza Rice who has repeatedly expressed reservations about the goals and […]